Building Relationships With Students
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Tip 12 Be Interested, and Be Interesting
Building strong relationships with our students works two ways: it means that (1) we need to see them as the fascinating, wonderful people that they are, and (2) we need to build opportunities for them to see us as the fascinating, wonderful people that we are (because we really, really are!). Put another way, it’s not very fun to build a relationship with someone we think is boring, and certainly none of us want to be the boring person in the relationship. Building relationships with students while teaching online should never involve a one-way flow of information. Think of the screen between you and your students as a two-way valve: sharing happens both ways. Of course, students might sometimes be too intimidated to share information about themselves, but a few well-placed questions are all you need to get to know your students. The following are two easy ways to get the ball rolling. 1. Notice something in the frame around or behind the students, and ask them about it. A simple “Hey, tell me about that picture that’s on the wall behind you!” can send an immediate message to your students that you’re interested in them. 2. Have an object that is meaningful to you nearby, and show it to your students along with telling them how you came to own the object. Then, ask them to go grab something that is meaningful to them. You can even put fun requirements on the object they must gather, such as, “It must be able to fit inside a coffee cup!” And any time you can bring up something you’ve learned about your students at a later date shows not only that were you listening, but that you also found what they had to say interesting and relevant. So, which should you be for your students—Disraeli or Gladstone? Both.
©️2022 by Solution Tree Press
In the late 1800s, Jennie Jerome (Winston Churchill’s mother) attended a dinner party where she met Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone, who were both competing to be prime minister of the United Kingdom. Ms. Jerome spent much of the evening speaking with them both. When a journalist later asked her what her impression of the two men was, she responded: “When I left the dining room after sitting next to Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest man in England. But when I sat next to Disraeli, I left feeling that I was the cleverest woman” (Mening, 2016).
